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Where We Left Off:
Our previous case file presented a curious case of carrion carnivores. We were unable to solve why a wake of vultures was here for a week.
Cry Wolf:
On December 25, 2024, Gus, Oliver, and most of the humans remained indoors. I set out to feed the birds alone and discovered unknown tracks in the snow. The cervids were the easiest to spot because they have split-hooves and their tracks were deepest (white-tailed deer and Jersey devil-deer hybrids). There were a lot of tiny bird feet impressions which barely made indentations. The squirrel tracks weren’t too hard to spot either. The foxes have such skinny legs and they were often seen on the cameras, so I knew the medium sized yet dainty toe bean shapes in the snow belonged to them.
I took photos and videos back to the detective agency and showed Oliver and Gus what I’d found. While we were able to stay warm and cozy indoors, we checked the security cameras and two of the trailcams to look for an explanation.
“It must be one of the coyotes,” Gus offered as the first theory.
“No, cousin,” Ollie said. “I bet it’s one of the bobcats.”
I explained some details that might be missed in the photos. “I can tell you that this was a beast of substantial size. I first thought of the bobcats too. However, I remembered someone online explaining that feline tracks were less likely to show their claw marks because of the retraction ability. Canines, thought, often leave nail impressions like the bears and the smaller mammals.”
“See,” Guster egged on his partner and cousin, “the human agrees with me.”
“Gus, I’m still not sure. I thought it was the coyotes too, but I can’t remember when they were last here.”
Checking the Security System:
Time has felt strange lately. Sometimes it feels like I’ve blinked and it’s ten years later. Other times, I’m straight up confused about what day, month, or year it is. I’ve noticed a lot of people online talking about this. It’s as if we’re all moving in and out of temporal anomalies unintentionally.
The solution was to open Windows File Explorer (or whatever they’ve forced us to call it now) and go to the most likely folders. I typed “coyote” in the search bar and kept getting zero returns. That didn’t seem plausible. I went as far back as March. The last piece of evidence we have is footage from March 31, 2024. The coyotes are somewhere else—hopefully alive and well.
Oliver jumped to the cat tower that usually belongs to Gus. He climbed over the chest of drawers to get to one of the water fountains which happens to be next to my desk.
“I don’t think that’s right,” the marmalade tabby with elegant pure white tuxedo bib and gloves said. He took his time tapping the water and licking it off. That was Ollie’s method of hydrating half the time.
It seemed incredibly unlikely that we hadn’t had a coyote walk through the area in that many months. I plugged in my backup drive and found the folder for the surveillance videos that aren’t on this computer. I had videos labeled with “coyote,” in the file names, but the problem with this system is that their file naming convention and their screen displays don’t show dates only times! What good does that do?
Windows is also not the greatest with its meta data. The files give a “created on” date which is not when the file was created. It’s when the file was put onto whatever storage drive you’re looking at. In this case, it read December 6th. The reason I know that can’t be when the security camera recorded it is because there’s a “modified date” which reads October 28th. Therefore, according to Windows, the file was modified before it existed.
Maybe the timeline of the universe is totally screwed up.
If you ever right-clicked on a file in Windows, go to a directory. At the top where it has default titles such as Name and Date, right click on an area of that title bar where there isn’t a title. Then click More and you will find a list longer than Trump’s rap sheet. There are so many fields that are some kind of date. I only wish they were more useful and reliable. There are “date taken” and “media created” fields. It would make sense if those had information like when a video was recorded, wouldn’t it? Oh, dear. Such is not the case. Those fields are notably blank.
Gus and Oliver need to send me to a FBI cyber data management course.
At best guess, it doesn’t seem like we would be out of bounds by thinking Armando or Cookie (the coyotes) have in fact been here as late as October-something. Could one of them have come by after the December snow and left the mysterious tracks?
On December 25th, I got to stay home with the cats, The Cook, The Grumpy Old Man, and The Butler. ‘Twas glorious not to be driving across the state for once. However, I didn’t get any research done for Gus and Ollie after I came home with the new evidence. We opened presents which I recorded. Then I spent the entire rest of the day editing that video in order to send the link to long distance relatives. Definitely worth doing, but my time to work on this case was running out.
Finally on December 26th, I went outside with Gus. The weather was beautiful and Gus hadn’t been out for a week! He deserved time for sniffing all the tracks and the many places animals have marked. That also gave me less time for researching and scouring the data for evidence of who left those tracks. He worked hard and kept busy. I was able to swap the memory card from the trailcam closest to the origin of the tracks. That was the one most likely to provide us with the evidence we needed.
Case Findings:
All of us were wrong! Gus, Ollie, and I watched the trailcam footage in high resolution. I couldn’t trust what I was seeing in the low resolution files on my phone’s screen. Higher resolution plus the bigger screen in the office and we had an unexpected answer to our mystery.
We discovered a beast that looked very much like a wolf! We have investigated werewolf activity in the area before, but that’s not where our collective intuitions led us. Rather, we wondered if any of our wolfie friends from Howling Woods Farm had gotten loose and found their way up north. Although, more close to our location is the Lakota Wolf Preserve. Both of these locations have some serious engineering in their fence designs. The fences go a certain distance underground and usually curve since canines love to dig their way under fences. The fences are also high and often angled inward (this is a design feature you may see in cat enclosures too since they can’t get up and over an angled portion).
Sometimes, people have animals which are illegal to own and that status depends upon the state’s laws. The wolf-dog now known as Winona at Howling Woods Farm, came from the gentrified streets of Brooklyn near Elton Street and Vandalia Avenue on December 23, 2011. On Christmas Eve, she was taken to her forever home with others of her kind in New Jersey.
While we carefully analyzed the still images and the video of the unsub, it became clear this furry beast was someone’s pet because of the red collar around its neck. This has been the only sighting so far. Oliver and Gus believe that the unsub is a Siberian Husky or Alaskan Malamute. The American Kennel Club states that the malamute breed is larger which is why we were leaning towards that identification. However, the AKC standard describes the Alaskan Malamute with a tail that curls over its back. The AKC page for the Siberian Husky has an illustration showing the dog’s tail down which matches the unsub in our images. This unsub looks rather huge (smaller than a Newfoundland but larger than a Collie).
Our only unsolved questions: What breed is this dog? Why was it here?UPDATE
Since this case file was originally posted, new information came in from one of our secret informants in the neighborhood. The dog is indeed a Siberian Husky. Her name is Leia and she lives up the street. She has a few different dog walkers and one day got away. We’ve been assured that Leia is extremely friendly and loves everyone.
Otherwise, Gus and Oliver are content in considering this mystery of the unusual tracks in the snow as solved.
Case Status: Closed
References:
James. “Lonely Brooklyn Wolfdog Finds Shelter in NJ.” Gowanus Lounge, 27 December 2011. Available at: https://www.gowanuslounge.com/lonely-brooklyn-wolfdog-finds-shelter-nj/ (Accessed: 28 December 2024).
Conley, Kirstan. “Illegal Wolf-dog Hybrid Caught Roaming Brooklyn.” New York Post, 23 Dec. 2011. Available at: nypost.com/2011/12/23/illegal-wolf-dog-hybrid-caught-roaming-brooklyn (Accessed: 28 December 2024).